Due to the increase in procurement costs, the importance of mechanical labor in agriculture has increased

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The agricultural portal’s research conducted in May revealed that 38 percent of the hundreds of Hungarian farmers interviewed were involved in the use of mechanical labor on both the service provider and user side. This activity is the main profile of 23 percent of the wage service providers, the majority only offer wage work as an additional occupation in order to make better use of their capacities. Accordingly, 68 percent of them provide services in an area of no more than 100 hectares, and only 6 percent undertake an area of more than 500 hectares.

According to the announcement, contract labor services are most often needed for harvesting, sowing, and soil work

The clientele of contract labor is almost always from a circle of acquaintances, which means that 78 percent of contract service providers come to the cultivation area from a distance of 10 kilometers. 84 percent of those who use the payroll service use this option because of the lack of machinery necessary for the operation, 6 percent because of a better quality of work, and the remaining 10 percent because of a temporary or permanent lack of labor. 88 percent of those affected use external machine assistance regularly, at least once a year. In the announcement, Bence Bolyki, managing director of Agroinform.hu, explained that due to the high fuel and input material prices, machine labor rates have risen significantly over the past year and a half. Those who take on contract work must also calculate that when replacing the given machine, they will have to reach much deeper into their pockets than before. However, the price increase also has a relatively hard upper limit, since there is a large supply in most areas of machine services, and farmers are very price sensitive. And this can be an important guarantee that wage labor remains an important element of the functioning of an average economy – said Bence Bolyki.

MTI